Being Vegan in New Zealand: Not What I Expected

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New Zealand is supposedly one of the best places to be vegan, so I had high hopes and assumed being vegan in New Zealand would be amazing.

Well… when I finally visited NZ I was quite disappointed, to be honest. But maybe this was just because of my high expectations. So, dial down your expectations and continue reading to know what to expect.

Vegan in New Zealand: My Expectations

According to surveys, 6-10% of New Zealanders follow a vegetarian diet or vegan diet. This high percentage of Vegans and Vegetarians made me assume it would be a vegan paradise.

Before we dive into the vegan situation in New Zealand, let’s have a look at what the vegan friendliest country I’ve been in looks like and what I compared New Zealand with.

So far the vegan friendliest country I have been in is the United Kingdom. The traditional cuisine might not be the vegan-friendliest but in every bigger city, there are at least a handful of vegan restaurants and even small-town restaurants have clearly labeled vegan options.

And every supermarket even in small towns, at least every midsized supermarket and up, has a special section of special vegan products. I don’t count by default vegan items like fruits and vegetables and stuff like that.

That’s what I expected to find in New Zealand as well, clearly labeled vegan options in restaurants, some all-vegan restaurants, and also specific vegan food in supermarkets. Not too much to ask for, right?

Hand holding a vegan ice cream, in the back you can see a very blue lake — A rare treat in New Zealand at the Astra Cafe near Lake Tekapo

Vegan restaurants in New Zealand

There are all-vegan restaurants in the major cities of New Zealand, like Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

I started my NZ holiday in Auckland and I loved the vegan food in Auckland. But in hindsight, I should have appreciated the all-vegan restaurants in Auckland more because I didn’t see any again until Wellington.

Wellington vegan restaurants — Vegan pizza at Nolita’s in Wellington

Wellington has many vegan restaurants but when I visited on a Sunday most of them were closed. But at least there were two vegan restaurants open on a Sunday in Wellington, and one of them turned out to be my favourite restaurant in all of New Zealand.

Most smaller towns don’t have any vegan or vegetarian restaurants. But what surprised me most was that many restaurants don’t even have vegan options labeled on their menu.

At some restaurants, it even seemed like they had a dislike for the word vegan since they clearly had vegan items on the menu but they didn’t label them as such.

But of course, there are exceptions, I had some great vegan food in restaurants. For example, I had some delicious vegan food in a vegan options place in Te Anau and it was even labeled vegan on the menu.

Two pots on the stove, one with boiling pasta and one with vegetable sauce, we cooked most of our vegan food in New Zealand ourselves — Most of the time we cooked ourselves

Vegan food in New Zealand supermarkets

I spent 3 weeks in New Zealand in a camper van and during that time we went to many different supermarket chains. And once again I was disappointed.

Every medium-sized supermarket in the UK has a better selection of vegan products than big New Zealand supermarkets.

The only time I was pleasantly surprised by the selection of vegan food they offered was in a supermarket just outside Wanaka. It was a massive supermarket and considering the big size of the supermarket, the selection of vegan products wasn’t that great actually.

The only special vegan items I bought in the supermarket were vegan gummi bears (which didn’t taste that nice, to be honest), some vegan cookies (which were very good), vegan yogurt (which had a super weird consistency), and some vegan minced meat.

All in all, not very impressive. In the UK, I can get those things probably in any random supermarket.

A sink full with fresh food, as a vegan in New Zealand I loved the local produce — I loved the fresh fruit in NZ which we got from farmer’s markets

Final thoughts: Vegan New Zealand

All in all, I think my disappointment about vegan food in New Zealand stems mainly from my too-high expectations. I’ve been to many other countries without a big selection of vegan products and I wasn’t disappointed because I didn’t expect anything else.

But when I saw that the biggest city in New Zealand, Auckland, only has a handful of vegan restaurants and that was by far the most vegan restaurants I saw anywhere, it left a disappointing feeling.